Re: [PATCH 0/9] Refactoring exit

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Michael,

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 1:00 AM Michael Schmitz <schmitzmic@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 28/06/21 10:13 am, Al Viro wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 10:45:23PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> >
> >> 13) there's bdflush(1, whatever), which is equivalent to exit(0).
> >> IMO it's long past the time to simply remove the sucker.
> > Incidentally, calling that from ptraced process on alpha leads to
> > the same headache for tracer.  _If_ we leave it around, this is
> > another candidate for "hit yourself with that special signal" -
> > both alpha and m68k have that syscall, and IMO adding an asm
> > wrapper for that one is over the top.
> >
> > Said that, we really ought to bury that thing:
> >
> > commit 2f268ee88abb33968501a44368db55c63adaad40
> > Author: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Date:   Sat Dec 14 03:16:29 2002 -0800
> >
> >      [PATCH] deprecate use of bdflush()
> >
> >      Patch from Robert Love <rml@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> >      We can never get rid of it if we do not deprecate it - so do so and
> >      print a stern warning to those who still run bdflush daemons.
> >
> > Deprecated for 18.5 years by now - I seriously suspect that we have
> > some contributors younger than that...
>
> Haven't found that warning in over 7 years' worth of console logs, and
> I'm a good candidate for running the oldest userland in existence for m68k.
>
> Time to let it go.

The warning is printed when using filesys-ELF-2.0.x-1400K-2.gz,
which is a very old ramdisk from right after the m68k a.out to ELF
transition:

    warning: process `update' used the obsolete bdflush system call
    Fix your initscripts?

I still boot it, once in a while.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds